My basic strategy:
Traits: Loves Outdoors, Loner, Slob. I gave my Sim the slob trait so that a dirty environment would not bother her. With all that cooking, I knew counters would get dirty very fast. I later bought Speed Cleaner because the cupcake machine won't let you cook on it if it's dirty.
I spent the first 4-5 days in Granite Falls, getting all my ingredients for OR recipes and fishing. The waterfall in the National Park is great for catching trout and salmon as well as walleye. Someone mentioned leveling Herbalism in order to identify Huckleberry. I just got my Sim focused and queued up "attempt to identify" numerous times until she got it. I think it only took 6 or 7 tries. It helps to already know which plant in the inventory is Huckleberry so you are concentrating on identifying the right plant. I never bothered with leveling either gardening or herbalism.
Instead of waiting for the lemon to grow, I went fishing for it in the stream near where the lemon tree grows (by Johnny's trailer). I also lived in that neighborhood so I had access to tomatoes early on. I planted one of everything that I'd need for recipes. Time wasn't really an issue for me with this challenge. In fact, I quit cooking not long after my Sim turned adult because I got tired of it. I eventually bought Super Green Thumb, which cut down on plant maintenance.
To get in the proper moods for emotional dishes, I built my Sim's bathroom a bit bigger than it needed to be. The night before, I would move her bed and stove, fridge, and counter into the room so she would not wake up happy (for angry). As soon as she woke up, I had her change into a pre-planned outfit with the appropriate animal hat and cook her dish. It was important to do the angry dish first thing in the morning before too much happiness would override the angry mood, which is only +1 with the hat. I cooked the other emotional dishes in the morning, too, because the inspired moods were too strong once my Sim got cooking other stuff.
The main thing I did was to get the base value of all dishes from Carl's guide. Then, I multiplied that amount by 2 and 2.5 to account for the Marketable multiplier. Marketable can cause a price that is 3 times the base, but the prices listed in the guide are retail prices, so are already a bit inflated from the true base price. Once I got into that range, I knew I probably wasn't going to do much better than that and moved on to other dishes. My Sim mainly ate the OR dishes since those had no value. Some dishes, no matter how many times I cooked them, just never got into that range. I actually did better in one of my test runs on quite a few dishes. Maybe if I had stuck it out longer.
Like Nutella, I used the cupcake machine for cash. I bought my Sim one of the expensive TV's for fun.
Anyway, my highest value dishes were:
Baked Alaska 2104
Trout Meuniere 1300
Roast Chicken 1074
Tuna Casserole 1194
I had actually nearly completed the challenge when the growfruit ban was announced and had to start over, which contributed to my being thoroughly sick of cooking! For comparison, the values I had in that file were: Baked Alaska 2188, Trout Meuniere 1582, Tuna Casserole 1225, Roast Chicken 1232. I was a little frustrated by that!
I didn't even have the planters, but I had planted a growfruit tree.
